


Unlocking The Door

by Lykegenia



Series: Kitten - Cullen x Maighread Trevelyan [7]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Demisexuality, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Psychological Trauma, Sex Work, demisexual Cullen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 17:16:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12512316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lykegenia/pseuds/Lykegenia
Summary: Cullen's life, his oddities, his trials, and his revelations





	Unlocking The Door

**Author's Note:**

> As someone who identifies as demi, demisexual Cullen is a headcanon very close to my heart. And since this week is Ace Awareness Week, with a demisexuality day over on Sex Laughter Honesty, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to write out what I think of our dear Commander.
> 
> Some of the events in this mirror my own thoughts/experiences of being on the ace spectrum, others do not. This fic deals with the desire demon in Kinloch Hold, as well as Cullen as a client at the Blooming Rose, which I know might be upsetting for some people. There's nothing explicit here, and there is a happy ending, but please don't feel you have to get to the end if you don't want to.
> 
> Content Warnings: sex work, psychological/sexual torture, PTSD

Cullen is sixteen when he decides there might be something wrong with him. Not physically – like many of the other recruits at the templar training school in Bournshire, his has discovered the pleasure to be gained from discreet stimulation of the organ between his legs – but he feels a disconnect between his experiences and the way his fellow trainees talk about theirs. _Who do you think of when you do it?_ is a question asked of him more than once, and when he blushes and shifts his feet and stutters that it’s nobody at all, the others decide he must be giddy on someone important or out of bounds. The truth is, on the rare occasion he indulges himself, it’s the base enjoyment that drives him, the anticipation of the end that gets him hard, and there is nothing more to it than that. At first, he wonders if his interests lie in another direction, but there are others at the school who do prefer the company of their own sex, and they, too, show more than enough inclination for the act itself.

Cullen decides to let them think him a prude, because the alternative is that they think him broken.

At eighteen, he catches the eye of an apprentice about his own age from across the hall at breakfast, and his stomach flutters. It’s alien, this feeling, terrifying and delightful all at once, and when he lies in his bunk, listening to the snores of the people around him he wonders if this is what they mean by desire. He wants to be close to Amell, to talk to her and maybe hold her so he can feel the warmth of her against his skin, maybe even kiss her, but his imagination falters upon trying to go further. Perhaps it is because she is a mage, and so forever beyond his reach anyway, but the darker, inward-turning part of his mind knows this is only a comforting lie.

This is why, when the Circle falls and his comrades are slain, he is not entirely surprised when the desire demon keeps him alive. He must confound it, lacking the urges other men have, and it spends hours – days, weeks? – peeling him apart, enjoying him, driving his body into raptures while his mind, frozen in place, is stripped bare of all he was, is, and hoped to be. The creature uses _her_ image, when it suits, and finds great amusement watching him writhe, beg, melt away from pain and pleasure so intermingled he can’t tell which is which.

And still he confounds it.

They send him to Kirkwall. At first, he’s grateful for the change, though the air in the Gallows is close, its walls high, all too reminiscent of a cage. He has his own room, at least, for which he is grateful, though he knows it must be because word travelled ahead that he has trouble sleeping these days, and shouts to drive the nightmares away. He tries to keep to himself, to do his duty, to forget, but the men he is posted with these days don’t care for the dignity required of their position as templars. When it becomes clear he will not break his oath of duty just to cool his appetite – the very thought disgusts him – his unit trick him to the Blooming Rose with rumours of an apostate hiding among the clientele. When they suggest he interview one of the young ladies, privately so as not to cause alarm among the public, he, fool that he is, takes the suggestion at face value.

And young lady? Oh she is skilled indeed. He’s not the first to come to her inexperienced, or oblivious to intention, and she knows the right mixture of coyness and command to get what his friends have paid for. She knows where to find the buckles on his armour.

Afterwards, he’s not sure what it is he feels. Part of him feels used, like the demon used him for sport, because his comrades guffaw and raise their drinks to him when he emerges in perfect order from the lady’s chamber, hair tousled, but that is not quite everything. This is not the cage at Kinloch Hold. The workers at the Rose are not demons, and their custom runs on the same principles as those of a blacksmith or a tailor. Nothing is offered that is not first paid for, and it is these clear-cut boundaries that licks at the back of his skull like the song of lyrium in his mind. The next time he wakes shaking with the laughter of the demon too loud in his ears, he counts his pay and finds himself slipping along darkened streets.

He learns much in the months that follow. He does not feel desire for any of the women he beds – still does not, though the demon tried its best to plant the seed in him – but he discovers other benefits to sex that help keep the worst of his nightmares at bay. He learns the mechanics of the act – an endless study in how to pleasure and be pleasured that requires both focus and attention to detail, a twitch here or a whimper there, a dialogue of control ceded and gained, a way of distancing himself from the less beguiling aspects of the deed. In the exhaustion that follows, sleep takes him so deeply that he often does not dream at all.

Desire requires tenderness. This he realises one night as he wakes to find his partner for the evening slumbering beside him, too far away to touch. In that moment, still hazy with sleep, it strikes him as deplorable that he cannot reach for the person with whom he shared such intimacy not hours before, that his caress would be unwelcome without the chink of silver. She cares nothing for him; to her, he is a transaction. He remembers his parents, for the first time in too long, and recalls all the little touches they would share throughout the day, how they would gravitate toward one another’s space and how it leant them strength when times were hard.

It should not be like this, he thinks, then dresses, leaves his coins, and does not return.

He is not made for love. As the years pass this truth becomes easier to bear. He gains the rank of Knight-Captain, which sets him above the jibes of the rank and file, and as the problems in Kirkwall deepen, he accepts his abnormality as the Maker’s will. How else is he to remain focussed and carry out the task that has been assigned to him, if not to lay aside personal thoughts in pursuit of the greater good? Meredith whispers in his ear, she thinks him merely dedicated to his duty, and he is, but she does not know his particular suitability to be Kirkwall’s shield against the wickedness of mages. It does not nag him. It is for the best.

When the world falls apart and he flounders with the rest in the rubble of the city, he has no time to wonder at his past certainty of mind, except sometimes, at night, in bed, alone. Is there a point to fighting if you’re fighting for nothing? True, he has nothing to lose, but every day he looks and sees people protecting each other, their lovers and their families and their friends. And what, Maker, does he have? Nothing more than his crumbling faith and his need to atone for all those years spent blindly following orders. Perhaps, he thinks in his darkest hours, his peculiarity of spirit is a punishment sent by the Maker, who knew before he did himself how he would sin.

But the Seeker comes – Cassandra – and offers him a place to try and build a new world. Punishment or blessing, he thinks no more of it.

Then _her_. She falls out of the Fade, the Herald of Andraste who is going to save them all, and now he’s sure his inclinations must be a punishment, because the first time his eyes meet hers across the table in the vestry, something steals his breath away. He covers it with good humour, but the truth is he’s never been knocked so far out of his depth, because the lurching of his stomach is something he never thought to feel again. It’s an infatuation, he tells himself, like last time – it will pass, or the world will take it away from you. He is not made for love.

And yet, they grow closer. He yearns to touch her, to feel her warmth, make her laugh, be lost in the scent of her hair. Sometimes when his mind drifts, he imagines the taste of her lips, and it terrifies him. This doesn’t happen to him. The feeling she sparks in his chest is a wildfire, and with every smile she flashes his way it spreads, until he is all panicked edges and bright heat and desire.

Yes, he decides, when he stands with her on the battlements and lays his heart bare. This is desire. This is what his parents had and what he read about in books and thought would never come to him.

There will be more to say in the days to come, about who he is and what he wants, but as she stands with him in the open air and shares a kiss, it is enough to realise that he is in love, and that, whether by the Maker’s will or not, he was never broken. Just waiting for her to unlock the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you liked it <3


End file.
